THE government will be urged to tighten controls on child abusers after a sadist with a history of cruelty to youngsters was convicted of a young boy's murder.

Senior police and an MP will lobby for "Ryan's Law" after 23-year-old Ronald Mariner was jailed for life for killing Ryan Mason.

Mariner bludgeoned seven-year-old Bolton boy Ryan with a hammer, stabbed him and strangled him. Ryan's body was then wrapped in a bin bag, put in a wheelie bin and wheeled through the streets and dumped on Farnworth golf course.

A Manchester Crown Court jury took 90 minutes to convict him of murder - and were then shocked to hear he had brutally attacked a three-week old baby, leaving it with a fractured skull and three broken ribs. They were also told that when Mariner was 14 he kidnapped an 11-year-old boy and stripped him naked before torturing him for hours.

Monitored

The Probation Service said they monitored Mariner for as long as they could under the current law.

For four months after his release from prison for the assault on the baby in 1998 Mariner was not allowed to live or work with children under 18.

But once he had successfully completed this licence period Mariner was free to do as he pleased.

Now the senior officer in the case, Det Supt Jack Dees, and Bolton South MP Brian Iddon are preparing to lobby the Home Secretary for a change in the law so offenders convicted of violence against children can be monitored in the same way as sex offenders.

Dr Iddon said: "I would certainly support a move against someone as sick as Mariner."

Cruel

Det Supt Dees, also called for more safeguards. He said: "It has become clear that children who are cruel to other children or animals are likely to be violent in later life - it is a serious marker.

"If either of those previous convictions were sexual, Mariner would have been monitored now."

A spokesman for Bolton social services said they did not know Mariner was in contact with Ryan and had no reports to suggest Ryan was in any danger.

"At the time of Ryan's death, social services were not involved in support of the family."